20
2. Again it is to be observed that an appointment made by the Sovereign by virtue of a trust or of a compact among private individuals would not be made by her as Sovereign, but as a person designated under that description; just as an appointment similarly made by the Lord Chancellor would not be made by him as Chancellor, but as a person so designated. But it is surely needless to add, that neither the British Constitution nor the theological standards of the Established Church contemplate any action by the Sovereign upon or towards the Church except in the character of Sovereign and by virtue of law. If, therefore, the Thirty-Seventh Article have the force which Lord Romilly assigns to it, what follows? It follows that the English Church, as a religious society, cannot possibly exist in such a colony as Natal. It follows that no religious society in such a colony can possibly hold the tenets of the English Church[1]
I do not propose to travel into the question further, or to pursue the propositions which I have ventured to assert to their logical or practical consequences. One word, however, as to the future. Of the dangers, vividly stated by the Master of the Rolls, to which small and scattered religious bodies may be exposed by the want of a common authority on disputed points of faith and discipline, every thoughtful person must be keenly sensible; though it may, I think, be doubted whether the real risks are quite as great, and whether they are as unmixed an evil, as the habits of a lawyer, and still more those of a Judge, would dispose him to believe, and whether the one sole and appropriate instrument for counteracting them is a central Court of law sitting in London. On this subject—on the real nature and unity of that great and widely-scattered
- ↑ See Note, p.22
